


What Cannot be Absolved

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Copious Quantities of Angst, Gross Misuse of Russian, Hurt/Comfort, civil war spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 18:09:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6818662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The immediate aftermath - Steve lets the shield go and they stumble out into the snow and Bucky cannot stop seeing the horrors playing out again and again behind his eyes. Civil War Spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Cannot be Absolved

Steve loosens his fingers, lets the shield slip free. The clatter of vibranium on stone masks the word that falls from Bucky’s lips as his eyes slide away from prone metal armor bright with shades of blood.

“ _Prosti._ ”

He tucks his face into the crook of Steve’s shoulder – the smell of sweat-and-blood mixing with the metallic, ozone stink of discharged repulsors and scorched Kevlar – and does his best to ignore the screaming of his shredded, synthetic nerves.

The Siberian air is bitter, cleansing where it smooths across their faces and chills the welling, clotted blood. Bucky stumbles in the ankle-deep snow and his eyes are wide and glazing over, some anesthetizing, tremulous thing swelling from his core.

“ _Prosti_ ,” he says again, and it trembles on his lips. _Mission report. December 16, 1991_. The pop and squeal of shot-out tires, the screaming… the screaming… and blood on his hands… blood that won’t ever wash off no matter how many times he soaks his uniform, no matter how many ways Hydra reconfigures his mind. “ _Prosti, prosti menya_.” I’m sorry. Forgive me.

But there is no forgiveness – not for the things he’s done.

The numbness spreads, shuddering through his heart and lungs, crawling along his muscle fibers and sinking into his gut. _I remember all of them_ , he’d said. And he did. Every scream, every final whispered prayer, all the pleading fear-filled eyes that looked on him in judgement. He could recite _every single god-damned name_.

He can’t breathe.

The world before his eyes has turned to TV static, blurred, unsteady and Steve is speaking, somewhere far-away and muffled by the ringing in his ears. “Bucky – hey, Buck. C’mon, look at me…” He is lowered, held with careful, gentle hands but the loss of his arm has left him overbalanced and instead of sitting, he crashes face-first into the snow, does not even try to catch himself. All he can see is falling, train tracks. He feels, all over again, the wrenching of his shoulder from its socket, the rip of muscles and tendons, the horrible blinding moment when his limb was torn away on that godforsaken mountainside.

And he remembers everything that came afterward, everything he did, every life he ruined with cold servos and metal in place of flesh.

He cannot stop whispering. _Prosti menya_. Forgive me. And, God I’m so sorry.

Steve is cradling his face, holding him together with hands that just beat a man half to death, and his calloused thumbs smear the tracks of blood along Bucky’s cheek, touch the cut above his eye. “Hey,” the familiar Brooklyn tones are so gentle, so careful. “Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay, Buck. I’ve gotcha.”

And Bucky doesn’t deserve this kindness. He doesn’t deserve tender hands and soft voices and the sweet, fond light in Steve’s eyes – he is fallen, irredeemable. _Forgive me father, for I have sinned, and sinned, and sinned. Prosti menya._

A shadow falls across their hunched and battered forms. He has come upon them silently, so light-footed that the snow does not even crunch beneath his step. T’Challa of Wakanda. King. Panther. This, Bucky thinks, is what it must have been like – to see the vision of one’s death standing over them, to feel so helpless.

Steve is scrambling to his feet, still the same scrappy kid who doesn’t know when to stay down. But Bucky drops his head and tilts his throat and whispers “go ahead. You can kill me.” _I won’t put up a fight._

“No.” Steve’s voice is gunshot sharp in the stillness. Again, more indignant. “ _No._ ”

But the claws are retracted and T’Challa reaches up to undo the clasps of his helmet. “I am not here to seek vengeance, Mister Barnes. Not anymore.” There is a strange twist to his mouth, a kindness that softens his eyes. He tilts his head. “You seek forgiveness.”

Bucky’s expression is sour, his one arm braced against his knee. “No. There’s no forgiveness for me, not after what I’ve done.”

“Oh, Buck…” His name is a sigh on Steve’s lips, tender and heartbroken all at once.

He holds up his hand to silence Steve, but there is no hand and no arm, only the throbbing stump of twisted metal soldered to his shoulder and he tips sideways again. “Don’t,” his voice is low, exhausted. “Just don’t, Steve.” When he looks up at his partner, his best friend – a relative stranger – his blue-grey eyes are dull, empty. Please, don’t make me beg.

Steve squeezes his shoulder, the purse of his lips enough that Bucky knows this conversation is far from over. He doesn’t release his grip as he turns toward T’Challa, placed strategically between his friend and the Wakandan king. “If you’re not here to kill him, what do you want?”

T’Challa’s eyes slide away from them. “I heard what Zemo said – he confessed it all to me, then tried to end his own life.” He rolls his shoulders, standing straighter. “He has been detained and will face the consequences of his crimes. And now I wonder,” here is voice becomes less assured “if I may offer my assistance.”

Steve hesitates.

Nodding, T’Challa says “I give you my word, as King of Wakanda, that no harm will come to either of you. I am here to make peace.”

And Steve, who has always believed the best of everyone, allows himself to relax. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.” His eyes wander the barren landscape, settling on the Quinjet, on the Wakandan plane. “We’ll leave the Quinjet for Tony – he won’t be going anywhere without a functional arc reactor.” And he swallows down his guilt, the revulsion that rolls in his stomach when he thinks of Stark’s face, the naked fear in his eyes, when Steve had plunged the lip of his shield into the suit and pressed until the arc reactor shattered.

He helps Bucky to his feet and tries not to fuss over the catatonic look in his partner’s eyes. But all the same, he wraps an arm around Bucky’s waist and gives a gentle squeeze.

“Mister Barnes,” T’Challa turns his gaze on the silent, sullen figure with infinite patience in his tone. “I do not expect you to grant me forgiveness, but I would apologize to you for my actions – I was impulsive and vengeful. My behavior was unconscionable.”

Bucky shakes his head, feeling very, very weak. “No,” he mumbles. “No, it’s okay.” He just wants to rest, to sleep and never dream again, never wake. But he stumbles after them toward the jet.

The moment Bucky sets foot inside the jet it all goes to hell in a handbasket.

Zemo is buckled into the four-point harness with his hands cuffed behind his back and restraints around his ankles, but his mouth is unimpeded and his eyes are cold and dead.

“ _Žilánie_ ,” he says. “ _R_ _žávyj_.”

The words are like a whip across Bucky’s back. He arches, eyes gone wide, a cry torn from his lips. “No!”

“ _Simnátsatʹ_.”

Steve grits his teeth. “Shut him up, T’Challa!”

Bucky grits his teeth and tries not to scream as his brain twists, neurons exploding like fireworks. Somehow his face is pressed into Steve’s neck, a pair of big, gloved hands clamped over his ears and he is screaming, sobbing. Not again, please. No more.

“ _Rassvét_ ,” Zemo grits out. There is a nasty, wet crunch and then all Bucky can hear is the screaming in his head and Steve’s heartbeat against his cheek. Zemo’s head lolls to the side, his freshly broken nose dribbling dark blood.

T’Challa rubs his knuckles, dark eyes stricken. “I – I had no idea…”

Bucky shudders and, almost unconsciously, Steve’s hand drifts down to rub soothing circles into his back. The Captain’s face is white beneath the blood and dirt, his eyes dangerously over-bright. “You can understand,” he says, breathless, “why we’d prefer that no one else finds out about this. The triggers…”

T’Challa nods, his kind face grim and chilly. “I do understand.” He inclines his head. “And again, I am sorry.” He turns and, stripping off his glove, punches access codes into a panel along the wall. It slides open with a hydraulic hiss and he takes from one of the shelves a bulky black box stenciled with the words ‘First Aid’. “You will find everything you need here,” he says, plunking the box down in the seat beside Steve. “But first,” he removes a roll of gauze from the box and sets about gagging Zemo, tying the knots with perhaps a bit more force than would be strictly necessary – but Steve is not going to argue.

With his cheek pressed into dark, dirty hair, Steve regards T’Challa with a wry twist of his lips and gratitude shining out his eyes. He does not have to say a word, the King of Wakanda simply nods and gestures for them to be seated on the wide bench before he disappears into the cockpit and sets the engines to whining.

Bucky has not stopped trembling in Steve’s arms, but he pushes himself away, sinking like a stone onto the canvas-covered bench. He does not dare to look Steve in the eye, shame burning like acid in his gut. His brain feels half-melted, spitting sparks. _Too easy_ , he thinks. _Too easy for someone to ruin me again._

Steve digs through the first aid kit, finds antiseptic and a gauze pad and sets about smoothing away the worst of the blood crusting on Bucky’s face as the jet purrs around them, a high-pitched whirr as it rises into the air. His face has always been an open book, and Bucky does not want to know what he will read there.

The antiseptic is cool and stinging against his cheek, Steve’s hands frightfully gentle. He says nothing for a moment, and then in the corner of his eye Bucky sees the blond head cant sideways and the stubborn slash of mouth says “Buck.”

“No.” He can’t do this, can’t bear it. Not with Maria and Howard Stark still weeping in his ears – _Sergeant Barnes?!_

But Steve is Steve and he doesn’t know when to stop pushing. “Bucky,” he repeats. “What happened…”

“What happened?! I killed people, Steve, that’s what happened. A lot of people.” When he lifts his head the skin around his eyes is red and raw-looking, his chin wobbles. “And I remember all of it – every single one of them.”

He hates the pity in Steve’s eyes, the softness and kindness that gentles his face and eases the tension in his sharp jaw. “You didn’t have a choice, Buck. It was Hydra, not you.”

“Then why do I remember? If it wasn’t me, why can I still feel the life bleeding out of them?” It wells inside of him, the grief, the horror playing out again and again behind his eyes. “Why do they haunt _me_ if it wasn’t my fault?!” He shakes his head. “Hydra may have given the orders, but I still pulled the trigger.”

Steve can’t argue with that. Instead he settles for cupping Bucky’s rough face in both his hands, pressing their foreheads together until the anguish begins to bleed from his partner’s limbs, the pain dulling back down to a steady ache instead of a scream. “We’ll figure this out,” he murmurs in the sliver of space between them. “Together.” _‘Til the end of the line…_

Bucky closes his eyes, nods. It all hurts so much – a soul-deep kind of ache, one that can’t be soothed away or stilled. It cries out, begs for absolution. _Forgive me for I cannot forgive myself_.

Steve steps back, kneads his flesh-and-blood shoulder with a reassuring grip, and turns to head for the cockpit.

“Steven Grant Rogers,” it slips out before he can stop it, this ritual. “Renata Gonzalez. Nicholas Fury.” His missions, his sins.

He is far gone, and Steve is smart enough not to try and bring him back, only turns and ducks into the cockpit before the growing list can stumble across _Howard and Maria Stark_ again.

Beyond the bullet-proof glass, thick grey clouds go streaming by, T’Challa silent at the controls. Steve braces his back against the hatch and tries to ignore his friend’s mumbling, a steady litany of names recited every night before he sleeps, listed again and again in precise, painful detail in the notebooks on his shelves in Romania.

“It is a hard thing,” T’Challa says at last, breaking the silence “to know logically that he is not to blame for the deaths he caused, but to nonetheless to recognize that it was still his own hands that did the killing.”

Steve crosses his arms, the adrenaline slowing its pulse through his veins has left behind a battered soreness in his bones. He feels as if he creaks with each movement of his joints. “He’s not the man I knew before – I wanted to believe that if I could bring him back, he’d be the same man he always was.” He shakes his head. “I know that’s not reasonable, but…”

“You longed for what used to be.” T’Challa nods sagely. “But the two of you have been through much, and neither one of you is the same as you were in the nineteen-forties. You are building a new relationship between new and traumatized people,” and here he holds up a hand. “Captain, you may protest all you like, but I am not a fool. I see the ghosts in your eyes too.”

It earns him a wry, sad smile, and then Steve is all business. “We can’t go back to New York or D.C. – we’ll be taken in a heartbeat, whether by Ross or Stark or the US Army themselves.” He thinks it over, ticking off all 117 countries that had ratified the damned Accords. “The world’s becoming a very small place – there’s nowhere left to run.”

“You are fugitives, Captain, this is true,” T’Challa says, flicking a few buttons on the control panels. “But I think you will find Wakanda willing to grant you amnesty. You will rest, you will heal, and we will do what we can to make things right again.”

Steve gapes. “I’m grateful, your Highness, but – if I may – _why_ would you do all this to help us?”

In the belly of the jet Bucky’s mumbles have finally drifted off. Steve will find him curled on the bench, fast asleep with an unquiet furrow between his dark brows.

“It is our duty,” T’Challa says “as members of the human race to sow peace and goodwill across the Earth and to do what we can to prevent sorrow and discord. If my service can perhaps eliminate one small bit of darkness from this world, then that is all I can hope to do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Google Translate says:  
> "Prosti" - "I'm sorry"  
> "Prosti menya" - "forgive me"
> 
> ... but we all know how accurate G Translate tends to be, so take this with a grain of salt.


End file.
